Bay Area engineer Ugo Conti has created a boat inspired by insects that might change the way certain seagoing ships will look from now on. The WAM-V, Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel, is an ultralight flexible catamaran that is designed to flex and skim over waves rather than pierce or push through them. The ship also has a modular design to allow the cabin to be swapped out quickly– it can go from a research vessel to rescue boat in less than an hour. With the ship’s light weight and very low draft, it’s a fuel sipper, with a maximum range of 5,000 miles. Take a look at Proteus in action.

Not everyone can grow a thick, full beard every winter. And for us, there is Beard Head. Beard Head knit beard caps combine the comfort and warmth of a traditional knit cap with the amazing styling of having a massive beard and moustache growing on your face.

Personally, I never thought that Chicago was all that bad, but the Second City rated number 3 in Forbes recent ranking of America’s Most Miserable Cities. Come on, they’ve got great bars that are open past my bedtime, hotdogs, the ghost of Studs Terkel, and… well… give me a day or two. But how can Chicago be more miserable than Buffalo or Detroit? Number one? Stockton, California, where only 15% of adults have a college education.

Probably one of the last signature architecture pieces in New York for a while the new Cooper Union academic building at Third Ave. and 7th St. in New York is taking shape. Designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis, the building will have a 120ft. atrium, Gold LEED certification, carbon dioxide detectors in the building that will automatically dim power and ventilation when rooms are unoccupied and a green roof that will be covered by a layer of low-maintenance plantings. One of the more interesting things about the building is that Cooper Union’s promotional website contains the worst description ever written in English about a building, e.g.: The zoning envelope proscribes the kind of exuberant challenge to the grid that the institutional personality of Cooper Union would seem to demand.

It seems Luca Marchio, a 33 year old native of Como, Italy, is perhaps the first Western tourist in Iraq since the start of the war. It wasn’t an easy trip to get there either. Marchio went from Italy to Egypt, then to Turkey, and from there to Kurdistan on a 10-day visa and then took a taxi 200 miles to Baghdad. After spending an afternoon touring the sites of Baghdad by taxi, the next morning he took a public bus 40 miles west to Fallujah. I am a tourist. I want to see the most important cities in the country, Marchio told a journalist as to why he was in Falluja. But fearing for his safety after spotting him on a bus, Falluja police called in the American marines, the Italian Embassy and then held him overnight for his safety. The flummoxed Italian Embassy in Baghdad explained to him that it was not safe to move around in Iraq. He is a little bit naïve, said the deputy chief of the Italian mission in Baghdad.